


Alea Iacta Est

by wintergrey



Series: Vade Mecum [3]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Coming Out, Commitment, Falling In Love, Love, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-07
Updated: 2014-06-07
Packaged: 2018-02-03 19:13:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,664
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1754935
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wintergrey/pseuds/wintergrey
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>The die is cast.</i>
</p>
<p></p><blockquote>
  <p>Steve didn’t see it coming and wouldn’t trade it for anything. He just wants to pinpoint when and how it happened. Maybe so he never forgets, no matter how long he lives. Maybe so someone else remembers after he’s gone. Whatever goes on public record isn’t going to be even close to the truth.</p>
</blockquote>
            </blockquote>





	Alea Iacta Est

It’s so late that the hour has wrapped around to early. The unsteady neon light of a ‘vacancy’ sign throws a wavering pink glow through the insufficient curtains of the cheap motel where they finally called it a night. Sam was willing to keep going, tracking a cold trail—if it was ever a trail at all—that some anonymous tipster said belonged to Bucky.

For the moment, though, Sam sleeps, the steady whisper of his breathing a salve on Steve’s raw nerves. Sam sleeps the way he lives: deeply and completely, gracefully taking up space with the sprawl of his loose limbs, one hand reaching out to where Steve is sitting across the room. The light filtering across the bed limns his features, picks out the full curve of his mouth and the sweep of his lashes on his dark cheeks.

Sam is more dogged, more persistent than Steve himself. Steve worries about Sam, Sam doesn’t worry about himself at all. Sometimes it feels as though finding Bucky matters more to Sam than anyone. Steve understands: it’s easier to bear a pain yourself than to watch the one you love carry it. And Sam loves him.

That’s more of a miracle to Steve than the serum that made him what he is. More of a mystery. His life doesn’t mirror most of the tales he’s been told, and not because of the serum. There are more stories spoken about ordinary men who became heroes through the mysterious intervention of wise men and mad men than there are stories about men who fell in love—unexpectedly and irrevocably—with other men.

Steve didn’t see it coming and wouldn’t trade it for anything. He just wants to pinpoint when and how it happened. Maybe so he never forgets, no matter how long he lives. Maybe so someone else remembers after he’s gone. Whatever goes on public record isn’t going to be even close to the truth.

It’s not a particularly publicity-friendly narrative. He’s never been able afford to ignore that aspect of his life and this is going to come out eventually and it’s going to get spun. It’s going to get spun into something palatable, something Captain America’s public can digest. Steve wants to remember how it really was.

There’s no charming friends-to-lovers arc, not from Steve’s perspective. ‘Instant connection’ is a convenient euphemism for ‘getting him naked in my bed was suddenly and without precedent a priority in my life’. There had been a brief moment in which Sam’s humour and charm and understanding had eased something in Steve’s heart that had been hurting too long but then the rest of him caught up with his heart and there was nothing innocent about how he felt after that.

The memory of that first rush of lust—there’s no other word for it, it was so completely consuming and out of character and undeniable—makes Steve’s cheeks burn even weeks after that need was finally sated.

He tried to bury it under art, filling half a sketchbook with recordings of sunlight turned copper and gold on Sam’s cheeks and shoulders, shadows under his jaw and between his thighs cast in shades of indigo and byzantium, the tint of rose blended with the raw umber of his lips, the starry glitter of laughter in his night-sky eyes. Art made it better and worse, made for an outlet at the same time it illustrated that Steve had every reason to be out of his head every time he let himself really look at Sam.

It hasn’t been painful or difficult, aside from some notable moments of physical discomfort at the start. Loving Sam has been the most unreservedly joyful, right, and uplifting thing that’s ever happened to Steve. The longer Steve knows Sam, the more clear it is that Sam is not only worthy but utterly deserving of being the object of someone’s unfettered affection and devotion. Steve’s just grateful that someone gets to be him.

Sometimes he still feels indecent about the depth of his sexual desire, as though Sam deserves something loftier and more pure. He struggled with that for a long time before they finally got honest with each other. Now he knows Sam will call bullshit on that in a heartbeat—and tell him to get his ass naked and in bed for a reminder of why wanting Sam and being wanted by him is a gift not to be squandered.

That’s what Steve wants to preserve. The truth that he immediately and without reservation desired the man now sleeping in his bed, wanted all of Sam for everything that he is. That Steve didn’t fall in love so much as leapt and Sam, with literal and metaphorical wings alike, met him halfway to free him from the world. He wants that truth known instead of whatever is going to make people comfortable.

“Baby.” Sam’s awake, propped up on one elbow with the cheap hotel sheets sliding down his body, reaching out for him. “You okay?”

“Just thinking.” Steve looks down at the notes he meant to make before talking to Sam and then Fury about how to take this public. He knows he needs to put things down in writing, in stone if possible, to make sure it comes out that way in the press. All he has written down is: the truth.

“Want to share?” Sam pushes up to sitting, crossing his legs and putting his back to the window. The trust implicit in that makes Steve’s heart soar. Sam doesn’t have to have his back to the wall as long as Steve’s looking out for him.

“Yes and no.” Steve puts the notebook aside, drops his pen on top of it. “I was just thinking this isn’t going to stay a secret forever.”

“Us looking for Bucky?” Sam grabs a bottle of water from the bedside table, cracks it open. “I’m pretty sure Fury’s counting on it.”

“No.” Steve rubs a hand over his face—it’s so Sam to have his mind on course while Steve’s lost in his emotions. “I mean me being in love with you. Me not wanting to live without you. Me and you fucking. The big floaty hearts in my eyes when I see you. Me doodling Mr. Steve Wilson on my notes in briefings.”

Sam chokes on his water, starts laughing before he has a chance to get his breathing sorted out. He points at Steve like he’s got something to say but he can’t stop laughing long enough to say it.

“You okay, buddy?” Steve can’t help laughing as well. He comes over and takes the water away before it spills all over the bed, kisses Sam in case that stops the laughter. It doesn’t. Sam grabs Steve by the front of his T-shirt, pulls him down into bed to keep kissing him, though. Steve lets Sam have his way, lets him tug the T-shirt off and throw it away into the dark so Sam can get his hands on Steve’s bare skin.

“There’s no way they’ll let you take my last name,” Sam finally says. Laughter still ripples across his belly, makes his chest vibrate against Steve’s. “Think of all the merchandise they’d have to reprint.”

“I don’t give a damn what they want.” Steve slides his hips into the cradle of Sam’s thighs, rests his elbows above Sam’s shoulders, sheltering him. Like this, he can trace Sam’s features with his fingertips between kisses. “They’re going to want a lot of things, Sam. I know them. The government. The press. All of them. If we give them any of it, they won’t leave us with a thing. They’ll sell papers about some props painted up to look like the love they’ll allow us—long after they’ve stripped away our truth and spit out our bare bones.”

“You’ve given this a lot of thought,” Sam says quietly, suddenly serious. His eyes are dark wells of love and concern.

“Can’t afford not to.” Steve meets his gaze. “Not if I’m going to protect you. Us. Everything we have.”

“I love you.” Sam strokes back Steve's hair, uses his thumb to smooth out the frown Steve feels gathered between his brows. “I just thought… I don’t know. Maybe I thought we’d go on forever telling them we’re just good friends.”

“Never.” Steve surprises himself with the anger behind the word, sees Sam’s eyes widen. “Unless that’s what you want, in which case… I wouldn’t do anything else. But I don’t want to hide what you are to me. You deserve for the world to know how important you are.”

“I have to tell my folks,” Sam says slowly. “Other than that, I guess you’re right. We get out in front of it, it’s not hanging over our heads. I’m sorry,” he says, and Steve doesn’t understand why. It must show on his face because Sam laughs quietly. “Because I thought, for a minute much less as long as I did, that you would be okay with living a lie.”

“Keeping our private lives private isn’t living a lie, Sam. But… it’s a luxury we can’t afford. Not with who I am.” Steve kisses him fiercely, like he can make it up to Sam if he tries hard enough. He would if he could. “I’m the one who’s sorry.”

“Don’t be, baby.” Sam tangles his fingers in Steve’s hair to pull him in for another kiss, then another. “Don’t be sorry for being the man I love. You’re right that this needs doing. We’ll get it done so we can get on with living. I’m kind of liking Mr. Sam Rogers, though, I gotta say.”

“I’m kind of liking you.” Steve rolls them over so he’s on his back with Sam kneeling over him, beautiful bare body illuminated in faded pink neon. “Whatever you call yourself.”

“Yours.” Sam kisses his forehead, like he’s sealing the word there. “When you tell them, you tell them that.”


End file.
